


I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time

by keeptheearthbelow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keeptheearthbelow/pseuds/keeptheearthbelow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss and Peeta find their way to each other — no matter how many decades it takes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time

**Author's Note:**

> Title, of course, from the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.”
> 
> I have to confess that this fic is a combination of prompts, well-aged over more than a year as if it were some type of fancy cheese. I initially considered the idea for the “purple=wisdom” day for PiP round 6, and when shortly afterward, during the glorious Everlark Drabble Challenge, Amy @muttpeeta put me in the challenge to write “Everlark in an unlikely scenario,” I thought again of this idea — but overall, due to some personal stuff going on at that time, I just couldn’t bring myself to write Everlark so late in life. But now, here it is for the “howls=lonelieness” prompt, and belatedly, here is Everlark improbably taking their entire lives to come together. And, with lasting gratitude to you who have provided such an amazing array of challenges and delights over the past few years, here is my last PiP.

The overly colorful woman accepts the last of the signed forms with a laugh like wind chimes. “Mr. Mellark, let me be the first to tell you welcome, welcome! It’ll be a pleasure to have you join the community at Sunrise Meadow!”

Peeta thanks her. Her voice is pitched too loud, but he supposes it’s what a lot of the folks need as they come through the new resident office. Beside him, Nick shifts and smiles uncomfortably. He might keep feeling guilty no matter how often Peeta agrees with him that it’s time.

The overly colorful woman — what’s her name? Miss Bauble? That can’t be right — is confirming the small selection of assisted-living duplexes. “I do agree this one is the best choice, and you’ll be happy there, but before you get started with change of address forms and the moving company and all that …” She’s now talking to Nick, and has lowered her voice. “I do want to double-check, is there any indication that it could be a challenge to have the neighbor be a single woman? Any issues with impulse control? Any lady friend who might take offense?”

Peeta lets Nick answer. Lets the woman reach the conclusion that he’s a confirmed bachelor, as they used to say, and get the point that he’s in full command of his faculties besides. When he sees relief cross her face, he adds, “Ship me out, ma’am — there’s no girl back home who’s missing me.” And she twinkles a smile at him, and assigns him to number 12 ½.

↔

Katniss doesn’t bother looking up from under her sun hat. The commotion in the other half of her duplex tells her enough, tells her that they’ve finally identified somebody who’s somehow healthy enough to not need the full nursing facility, yet unobtrusive enough for her to tolerate next door. They’d sent her a letter about it, in big type that she still struggled to read. All the same, she’d been hoping it wouldn’t come to pass.

Footsteps go into the house heavy with the loads they bear and lighter on their way back out. Young voices coordinate, businesslike at first, then joined by an older, quieter voice that triggers the rest to put on an optimistic tone.

She keeps her head down. Works the earth and tends her plants by how they feel and smell. Maybe the neighbor won’t be a gardener, and she won’t have to give up solitude in her backyard.

↔

He isn’t a gardener. But he’s _friendly_. Dear God.

↔

This place is beautiful, Peeta’s surprised to discover. It seemed like a nice setting when they did the tour and walk-through (well, wheel-through, in his case), but truly, living here is wonderful. A quiet, shady street, a porch overlooking a backyard gorgeously tended by the lady in the other half of the duplex, a stream flowing beyond the fence along the back, where ducks land and a trail draws families from the neighborhood to come walk their dogs. He feels at home.

He doesn’t mean to be so intrigued by the lady next door, but she draws the eye in a manner he can’t quite explain. After all, they’ve hardly exchanged two words, and mostly he just sees her in the yard, at work, face hidden behind a broad-brimmed hat and a white braid slung over her shoulder. She gets around quite well, in a way that makes him envious, and he wonders at first why she’s in assisted living. Over time, seeing her in her garden, he puts two and two together about her colorful garden tools that she holds up in front of her or handles the business end of before putting to use, that she counts whenever she finishes her work; about the way her fingers stroke her plants for information, not appreciation; about how often she leans down to smell.

She tends not to respond to anything he says to her other than the briefest of greetings. No reply to invitations for coffee or something fresh out of the oven. He strongly suspects there’s no problem at all with her hearing. But he’ll still keep saying hello, so that she knows that if ever she needs to call on his eyes, she can ask.

↔

She’s considering doing her gardening after dark. It’d be cold, but it isn’t like she needs to see what she’s doing, not after all these years.

↔

Sage, mint, chamomile, chives, dill, garlic, rosemary, thyme. Even nasturtiums and violets. All fresh and flawless. God, he wants to cook with at least half of what she’s got growing out there. And her meals are delivered to her! What a waste of her skill.

↔

“Miss Everdeen.”

She sighs. Has he been waiting for her, there on his half of the porch? “Yes, Mr. Mellark?”

“I can’t help but notice that you’re growing some beautiful sage out there. I really miss cooking with fresh sage. Could I use some of yours? In exchange for half of … well … whatever it is I end up making?”

Katniss squints at him. “You want some sage and you don’t even know what you’re going to do with it?”

His laugh is surprisingly sweet. A little sheepish. “Hardly seemed worth getting my hopes up, I guess, if I might not be able to have some.”

She considers. They call the delivery meals home cooking, but they aren’t. She feels around in her tool bag until she identifies the small shears. “I’ll allow it.”

↔

He’s half-napping in his room, lulled by the breeze from the open window, when he hears Nick out on the porch suddenly say, “Oh, hello.”

“Hi there,” a woman’s voice replies. Not Miss Everdeen. Somebody younger, more outgoing.

“Visiting your mom?”

The woman laughs. “You know what, people have made that error my whole life. I’m actually Katniss’s little sister.” Over Nick’s apology, she continues, “Oh, no worries. Our parents always wanted more than one child, but they had her not long before the Depression, and they managed to be done during all that time, and then surprise, I came along! At that point my sister had lied about her age and run off to the Women’s Army Corps, but she was my hero from the start, and she raised me so much that I never minded people thinking I’m hers.” The joy in her voice is so clear that Peeta can’t help smiling, listening to her. “Anyway, we haven’t met, I’m Primrose.”

“I’m Nick. Family friend of your sister’s neighbor here. He and my dad were in the war too, in the Pacific.”

Peeta has heard the war stories before, even if he’ll take to his grave that Finnick made half of them up. He drifts off again.

It doesn’t seem long before a shift in Primrose’s tone wakes him up. “So Nick, let me ask you something. Katniss has apparently been eating even less than usual of what the home assistance service brings. I asked her about it, and she said Mr. Mellark has been cooking for her, in exchange for herbs and things from her garden. Has he talked about that?”

“Huh. He hasn’t, but, well, I haven’t been by for a couple weeks. And Peeta’s a terrific cook, always has been. He makes good use of the modified kitchen here. But is, geez, is your sister eating okay?”

“Oh sure,” Primrose assures him, “she looks actually less frail to me, and it isn’t like there’s anything she isn’t supposed to eat. It’s just … she’s never made friends with her neighbor before.”

↔

When the weekend is over, and these younger people have gone away to their own lives, Katniss grumbles to Peeta, “Prim acts like I’ve spent my life as a hermit.”

He smiles. “I can see it. Living among wolves. You’d be the queen of the pack.”

She snorts. “I would be a lone wolf. You’d be in the pack.”

“Probably.” The breeze rustles in the leaves of the oak in his half of the yard and the dogwood in hers, and in their hair as they sit on the shared porch. “Maybe you’d drop by the pack for a few of these.” He nudges the plate toward her again.

She unwraps her hands from her mug of tea (made from her chamomile flowers) and picks up another still-warm dill-and-cheese scone. A glance shows her he’s smiling, his blue eyes crinkled — it’s nice, sitting close enough to him to see his eyes. After eating half the scone, she says, “All the same. We could see if those younger people and their families want to come for Thanksgiving.”

↔

Their people do come for Thanksgiving, and their mouths fall open when they realize Katniss and Peeta are holding hands under the table. And when they visit during the winter, they start to suspect that just as their days aren’t spent alone, neither are their nights.

“Seriously? At _their_ age?” Primrose is whispering to Nick in the living room. Katniss is just on the other side of the doorway to the kitchen, putting dried mint in jars, and she can hear them perfectly well.

“I know. And what are they even getting up to?”

“I don’t need to know.”

“I mean, he had a past relationship or two, I think, because I remember my folks going out with him and somebody else from time to time —”

“Well, and so did she — not that we ever sat around and had a lot of girl talk about it — but I just always got the feeling that she didn’t think it was for her.”

“Exactly. He’s always been the most incredible guy, honestly, I could not be more honored to have a man like Peeta to look to in my life — but there was always this loneliness about him, like he’d never met his match.”

“Ha, see, I’m not sure my sister ever really wanted to meet her match.”

“Bit ahead of her time?”

“She’s independent to her core. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to see her with anyone who wasn’t her equal.”

Later, the face of the moon bright outside the window, Katniss tells him what she heard. “They think this is a romance.”

She can hear the smile in his voice. “Too bad for them. It’s a partnership built on trade.”

She laughs.

↔

In the spring, the family and friends visit again — for a wedding, a tiny, short ceremony held outdoors in the bride and groom’s shared backyard. The invitations read, “Please join us for one of the unlikeliest events in our very long lives. No matter how many moments we have left, we’ll spend them together.”


End file.
